Many network designs and deployments are designed as hub and spoke architectures. These hub and spoke architectures can include access ports for computing devices that can be connected to a closest switching hub. Network components (e.g., access ports, interconnection ports, linecards, and/or switches) can always be turned on and/or enabled, irrespective of the existence of traffic generating or receiving data. Networks can also utilize a few switches with large radix values and may be unable to achieve energy proportionality due to the inability in current designs to turn off the backplane portions incrementally in a load proportional manner.